Remember Me As A Time Of Day
by JustAnotherCrazyWriter
Summary: Still, she bangs her head against the popped hood when a rough, Southern accent drawls out, “Car troubles?” Kara/Tim. Rated for language.


**_remember me as a time of day_**  
_Still, she bangs her head against the popped hood when a rough, Southern accent drawls out, "Car troubles?"_ (Kara/Tim, post-BSG, FNL post-S4)

* * *

They meet on a deserted highway under the hot sun.

It's Texas, she realises. Small-town Texas on a Thursday afternoon, and her car decides to break down. Almost drove into a haystack as the smoke started to billow from the hood of the rust bucket she calls hers. She sits inside the vehicle for a moment, rolling her eyes and feeling the air-conditioning escaping the car. It's hot here. Burning, almost.

_Typical_.

Kara ditches the flannelette shirt inside the previously air-conditioned car, leaving the white singlet as the only protection against the sun. (_I knew I should have taken that godsdamned sunscreen. Sun cancer. Whatever_.) She ties her hair into a ponytail, and gets to work.

Twenty minutes later, she's still under the hood of the vehicle, grease smears on her hands and face, but still as stubborn as a mule and she'll get this bomb running if it takes her until eternity (_a brief thought passes her mind; she's made to drive the thing, not fix it. Fixin' it was never her problem_). She's starting to get frustrated (_she always had that short temper_), and vaguely registers hearing a vehicle pull up behind her.

Still, she bangs her head against the popped hood when a rough, Southern accent drawls out, "Car troubles?"

She swears loudly, rubbing the back of her head. She turns around, and a guy's standing there, long hair and glasses, swinging his keys around. A twang in his voice she thinks is familiar, only she's never met him before now.

He raises an eyebrow, amused.

Kara leans back against the burning bumper of her car. "You offerin' your services?"

He nods, corner of his mouth quirking upwards. "Sure, ma'am."

She raises her eyebrow this time, but then he's taking off his glasses and walking towards her. Well, towards the car. She shuffles aside, and watches as he observes the damage with obvious experience. Gazes appreciatively at his toned arms, defined jaw line, cheekbones and hair falling into his eyes, and his shirt with about four buttons done up, revealing glimpses of a well-muscled body, and-

"You gonna keep on starin' at me, or do you want to help?"

Kara blinks, then snorts at his remark and props a hand on her hip. "What do you need help with?"

He looks up with a hand down the front of the car, and jerks his head towards his truck. "Could you get me a beer?"

(_Okay_, that _she could help with_)

He's gauging her reaction, she can tell, but she can't help her eyes widening in interest. "Where are they?" she asks, back already turned on him and walking towards the black vehicle.

"There's a six-pack on the passenger seat."

She grabs one for herself, as well, and tosses him the other when he finally has his hands free and is leaning back against it. She gives a grimace at the first gulp, (_because frak, she isn't used to this stuff_) but quickly chases it down with another.

"I'm Kara," she offers a couple of minutes into the contemplative silence, leaning against his own vehicle.

"Tim."

Yeah. She isn't sure it suits him, but then _Starbucks _is now a coffee shop and she's never thought much of that, either. The coffee itself was alright, though.

"I can't fix your car," after another silence.

She looks sharply at him, brows furrowing.

"But there are some tools back at the shop that I could fix it with; I could tow you there or something."

So he's a mechanic. Fixes cars. Nothing glamorous, but what was she expecting?

"You're sure?" she asks, out of politeness. She's learnt that in her time on Earth, at least.

"You'll be paying me, anyway," he assures her, a faint trace of his smile still on his face as he throws the now-empty beer bottle into the tall grass on the side of the road.

* * *

Kara goes walking around in Dillon, wandering aimlessly and getting lost, when she sees water glinting in the moonlight. A creek? She moves closer and it's not a creek. It's a lake, deathly still and a cold black. Tim's still somewhere fixing her car, she figures. So she's alone. She's used to it, but it doesn't stop her mind wandering. It doesn't stop her jumping when a branch snaps. It doesn't stop the sound of the restless rustling of the trees cutting through the still, damp air to her ears, whispering _you are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace, you will lead them to their end_, and it isn't just in the hybrid's voice, it's in the water and the fabric of her clothes and the wind ripping through her body and-

She leaves then. Turns around and runs, sprints, almost trips over her feet that just _won't go fast enough_.

(_This is what she left behind. She was stupid to think it wouldn't find her, here_.)

* * *

Kara returns to Riggins' Rigs later that night (or early in the morning, if you were watching the clock) and finds Tim still up and alive at this hour. She hasn't seen a motel or hotel, or whatever around when she was exploring, and guesses that Tim would probably know something to help her.

Ten minutes later he offers her his couch, another ten and they're making out against his wall, knocking over an empty beer bottle on the way to his bed.

(_Later, she thinks that they'd always expected this, right from when she retrieved his beer for him on the side of the highway. Bad habits an' all_.)

She wonders aloud what there is to do on a Friday night in this tiny town, and at the sudden mad glint in Tim's eyes, she's unsure whether that was the wrong thing to say.

"What is there to do on a Friday night in Dillon?" he repeats, mock-disbelief seeping easily into his voice. "There's football, Blondie."

* * *

There _is _football. There's a great, big dirty field with kids running at each other, and shoulder pads and helmets and frak knows this is hell of a more contact sport than Pyramid. (_She thinks she's beginning to like it_.)

Then he deposits her next to the coach's wife and their daughter, who's pretty in that innocent kind of way, before heading onto the side of the field. It's awkward as hell, and somehow it feels like she's meeting the parents, even though they're not together. She almost snorts at that thought. Tami Taylor eyes her in that weary way only mothers do (_she's familiar with it, even if her mother never gave a damn – if she ever did, she never showed it anyway_), and Julie mostly ignores her to text away on her phone.

She sinks into the hard chair, sunglasses already propped onto her face, when she realises-

"Why are people staring at me?" she mutters.

Julie throws an amused look at her. "You came here with Tim."

Kara's eyebrow rises automatically. "Right."

"He… has a reputation. Or had one. Not to mention the whole jail-thing."

Well, fuck. (_It's not like she can judge, anyway_.)

"Julie!" her mother scolds.

Kara can't help but feel like she's in the middle of some teenage drama.

Thing is, she isn't sure if she hates it.

* * *

"So. You're kind of a big thing 'round here, aren't you?"

He shrugs with that soft smirk, knocking back another gulp of beer. "I _was_. Now? I'm just another ex-Panther with a huge goddamn ring and a supposed 'legend' in the wake. Thing is, I'm still living in Dillon. God knows I'll end up the next Buddy Garrity." He mutters the last part under his breath.

"But he never landed in the clink for two years," she guesses, eyes glinting as she stands to stretch.

Tim doesn't seem surprised that she found out. Just contemplative, so he allows it, tipping his bottle at her. "That's true," he drawls, eyes following her movements.

She sighs, leaning to put her empty bottle on top of the coffee table. "I'm leaving in the morning," Kara announces.

He jerks his head up to look at her squarely, but otherwise doesn't say a word. "Alright," he finally offers, toying with the bottle in his hands.

They always knew it would never be permanent, anyway. Like the sex, they knew it from the beginning. She was too flighty, and he could never commit. Just a brief flash of light in each other's lives, another character in their stories.

She leaves in the morning, lingering on the doorstep before walking back out into the unknown. Back to running from that voice, from her 'destiny', from what she left behind.

* * *

**Reviews aren't compulsory, but I'd love to know that you've read and what you thought. Feedback means so much to us mere writers, as I'm sure a lot of you know. (:**


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